Ohio History Journal

BAKER ON THE FIFTH BALLOT? THE DEMOCRATIC ALTERNATIVE: 1932     by ELLIOT A. ROSEN     A study of history's might-have-beens is often more interesting and infor- mative than one would suspect from the bare recital of what happened. For in addition to the zest of narrative it has the delight of speculation. Very often the threads which lead to a great decision are intertwined with other strands which, if they had prevailed, might have brought about an entirely different aftermath. What would have been the consequences for this nation if Lincoln had not met his death at the hands of an assassin early in 1865? What if Wellington's thin red line at Waterloo had collapsed before Bl??cher brought support? What prompted decisions to be made in one way and not in another?             NOTES ARE ON PAGES 273-277

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BAKER ON THE FIFTH BALLOT?                                      227

 

If the powers and personalities at the Democratic convention at Chicago

in 1932 finally had not reached a decision on the fourth ballot to nominate

Franklin D. Roosevelt, it is certain that the Roosevelt strength would

have crumbled soon and someone else would have won the prize. It is

the thesis of this article that Newton D. Baker would have been the man

chosen and Ohio would very probably have added another to her long list

of presidents.1

If the electorate had chosen Baker in 1932, the course of our nation's

history would have been radically different. There would have been no

New Deal. The personnel of the new administration would have been of

another sort. The attack on the depression would have taken another course.

The Democratic party for years to come would have been oriented to a

quite different philosophy.² Clearly the Jeffersonian-internationalist wing,

represented by figures such as Cordell Hull, would have been more content

under Baker's leadership. Also, the Democratic party would have been

more conservative in its domestic policies and more internationalist-minded

in its foreign relations.

Newton D. Baker of Ohio was nationally known in 1932 principally

because of his former association with two of the luminaries of the Progres-

sive era, Tom L. Johnson, reform mayor of Cleveland, and President Woodrow

Wilson. As Cleveland's city solicitor, from 1902 to 1912, he was one of

Johnson's key aides in the famous street railway controversy, which had

as its goals municipal control and lower fares. He aided also in the effort

to derive additional revenue for the city by reassessment of railroads and

utilities. As mayor of Cleveland (1912-1916), after the defeat and death of

Johnson, Baker won the admiration of Progressives for his personal integrity

and the maintenance of Cleveland's reputation as the nation's best governed

city. Particularly appealing to radical progressives was Baker's establish-

ment of a municipally owned power plant.

When Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of War, Lindley M. Garrison, resigned

early in 1916, as a consequence of the President's concessions to the

Congress in the famous preparedness controversy, Wilson tapped his former

Johns Hopkins student for the post. In the course of five years' service,

until 1921, Baker, who came to his post with a reputation as a progressive

pacifist, made the same national reputation as Secretary of War for

efficiency and integrity that he had enjoyed in Cleveland. In the process

he also became one of Wilson's most trusted advisers.

Baker returned to Cleveland in 1921 to head the distinguished law firm

of Baker, Hostetler and Sidlo. Throughout the 'twenties he crusaded for

American commitment to the League of Nations as the best hope to

forestall another war. Particularly well known was his moving speech

before the Democratic National Convention of 1924 in which he attempted

without success to secure endorsement by the party of Wilson's advocacy

of United States membership in the League. Though he lost the battle,

his emotional address in behalf of those, including Wilson, who had died

for a principle enhanced his stature and cemented his image as heir apparent

to the mantle of the former president.

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In the 1920's, however, it was contended by some people that the once-

progressive disciple of Tom Johnson and Woodrow Wilson was growing

more conservative. They observed that his Cleveland law firm was asso-

ciated with a large corporate law practice, sometimes as a representative

for utilities. And when he served a term as president of Cleveland's Chamber

of Commerce, as we shall see, he was an exponent of the open shop. But

those who knew him well assert that fundamentally he had not changed.

Raymond Moley, Roosevelt's principal adviser in 1932, coincidentally had

also made his early reputation in Cleveland and knew Baker intimately,

particularly through association in several civic enterprises in the lake city

after the first World War. Moley recalled that the "progressive crowd that

criticized him in Cleveland" had failed to observe that Baker not only

knew and feared the consequences of war but feared also excessive centraliza-

tion of government. "I heard him speak more than once in Cleveland,"

Moley remembered, "and he was always portraying the terrible circumstances

that would attend the next war." At the same time "I heard him say once

that it is better to permit a country . . . to make mistakes and rue them,

then to restrict and control them by any arbitrary power."³

Newton D. Baker's strength within the Democratic party, gathered at

Chicago in 1932, was pervasive rather than intensive. Baker had the support

of the intellectuals, among them Walter Lippmann, William E. Dodd,

Douglas Southall Freeman, George Fort Milton, Allan Nevins, and Adolf

A. Berle. Lippmann's famous declamation on Roosevelt's lack of conviction

and his lack of qualification for the presidency is well known.⁴ But less often

discussed is the fact that the columnist was an avid partisan of Baker's

candidacy5 and that intellectuals, old Wilsonians, businessmen and others

who knew Franklin Roosevelt in the Navy Department days generally

regarded the then New York governor in the same unfavorable light as

did Lippmann.⁶ "Lippmann," Raymond Moley remembers, "was putting into

words and publishing what was said in every private club in New York."⁷

Roosevelt himself, though angered by Lippmann's Herald Tribune article,

held Baker in great esteem. ".... Newton," he wrote Josephus Daniels,

"would make a better President than I would."⁸ Daniels agreed that Baker

was the party's ablest man.⁹

Adolf A. Berle, a Baker supporter, typified Democratic sentiment at

Columbia University, the principal source of Franklin D. Roosevelt's Brains

Trust. Berle, a member of the Columbia University Law School faculty,

an attorney and a specialist in corporate organization and finance, in com-

pany with the noted Columbia University historian, James T. Shotwell,

persuaded a group of attorneys, early in 1932, to write an open letter to

Baker urging him to declare his candidacy.10 Nevertheless, Berle's recruit-

ment to membership in the Brains Trust occurred in April 1932 and was the

work of Raymond Moley, Professor of Public Law at Columbia and head

of the Brains Trust, an unofficial group organized to advise Roosevelt on

the formulation of campaign issues and ideology. Moley, in fact, recalls

that the general task of recruitment of scholars to advise Roosevelt was

not an easy one, since the essential division among Democratic members

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of the Columbia University faculty, including Berle, was between Baker,

favored by the conservatives, and Norman Thomas, the Socialist, favored

by the liberals. "When I went to Berle's office at the Columbia Law School,"

Moley recalls, "to recruit him for our group, he said, 'I have another candi-

date.' Then I said that doesn't matter. We need your specialized knowledge.

He then accepted."11

Baker was also the choice of eastern conservatives in the business and

banking community who, because of their economic interest, were inter-

nationalist in their foreign outlook and conservative in their domestic

philosophy. These included A. Lincoln Filene of Boston; Owen Young,

president of General Electric; John W. Davis, Frank Polk, Thomas Lamont

of J. P. Morgan & Company; Lee Olwell, vice-president of the National

City Bank of New York; Melvin Traylor, a Chicago banker; Robert Wood-

ruff, president of Coca Cola; Nathan Straus and B. Howell Griswold of

Alex Brown & Sons, Baltimore bankers; Eugene Untermeyer of Guggenheim,

Untermeyer & Marshall; and Norman Davis, also a member of the inter-

national banking community. The philosophy of this group was perhaps

best typified by David F. Houston, Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of Agri-

culture and in 1932 president of the Mutual Life Insurance Company.

Houston decried increasing dependence of the people on the federal treasury.

Nor did he sympathize with efforts in Washington aimed at the relief of

the farmer.¹² Thus, Baker, in a campaign, would have been stronger than

Roosevelt not only with conservative Democrats but with conservative

eastern Republicans as well.13

As has been mentioned, Baker was heir apparent to the mantle of

Wilsonian internationalism especially because his brilliant and impassioned,

if unsuccessful, speech in favor of League endorsement at the 1924 Demo-

cratic convention had cemented the image.14 Byron R. Newton's feeling

for Baker was typical of many of the old Wilson crowd:

Few men are born nine feet tall, and few men are born with the

breadth and strength to sacrifice themselves to the advantages of the

great cause or the betterment of their fellow men. Usually these chaps

died in childbirth or were burned at the stake quite early in their

career, but when they do survive the burning and the childbirth they

leave history and milestones behind them, because, like yourself, they

have no illusions, no vanities, no fears -- just a steadfast gaze at the

road ahead.

That was the one quality in Woodrow Wilson that in my eyes lifted

him above all other men. In my life I had seen much of other men whom

the world called great, but Wilson was the only one of them all, who

if he thought necessary to the achievement of some great end, would

sacrifice himself and his political future to the betterment of mankind.

Such men are nine feet tall, very scarce, but in the great plan of human

life it seems to be necessary for one to appear now and again to wallop

the floundering mob into shape.¹⁵

For Byron R. Newton and many of the other Wilsonians, Baker also

possessed these qualities and would have made an excellent candidate for

the presidency. Indeed, this was the opinion of the former President's

widow herself.16 In the words of another supporter, "I cannot abandon the

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conviction," Norman Davis wrote Baker, "that our only hope is through

you, and that it is not too late even now for you to do it."¹⁷ And after

several rebuffs in primary elections in early 1932, even the venerable Colonel

House, an ardent Roosevelt supporter, told Robert Jackson, "I think we

had better be thinking of a second choice." House indicated to Jackson,

who was not receptive, that Baker was his alternative to the New York

governor.18

In the field of news media an imposing array of writers and editors, in

addition to Lippmann, supported Baker's candidacy. These included John

Stewart Bryan, editor of the Richmond News Leader; Mark Watson, Mark

Sullivan, and Fred I. Kent of the Baltimore Sun; Roy Howard of the Scripps-

Howard chain; Julian Mason, editor of the conservative New York Evening

Post; the Cleveland Plain Dealer; the Cincinnati Enquirer; the Des Moines

Register-Tribune; H. V. Kaltenborn and George Creel. If some did not

openly endorse Baker, as was the case with the editors of both the Baltimore

Sun and the Scripps-Howard papers, endorsement of Alfred E. Smith

instead was regarded as a "cover" until the propitious moment.¹⁹

But Baker's greatest political strength lay with those conservative ele-

ments in the Democratic party who controlled its machinery and who

wanted to forestall the nomination of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Whereas

Roosevelt and his principal adviser, Raymond Moley, saw in the 1932

campaign an opportunity to present a liberal economic program as an

alternative to that of the Republican party, Alfred E. Smith, John Raskob,

chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and Jouett Shouse, chair-

man of the party's National Executive Committee, feared a takeover by

the Progressives and liberals of the party they controlled. With Roosevelt

as nominee, Moley wrote an old Cleveland friend, "we can have a real align-

ment between liberals and conservatives."

The thing that is hardest to me is the persistent propaganda against

him [Roosevelt] by interested people, particularly the power interests

who have not been friendly to his ideas of governmental power control

in New York. In the near future we may expect these elements of the

Democratic Party who want to be as near like Hoover as possible to

concur on some candidate like Baker or [Owen D.] Young. This, I

believe, will be the final outcome of the Smith opposition.²0

Cordell Hull was equally concerned that the "Smith-Raskob-Du Pont

group, which according to my belief favors a virtual merger of the two

old parties except as to prohibition," would attempt to kill off Roosevelt

and in the process destroy the Democratic party after 1932.21

John J. Raskob, an intimate of Pierre S. Du Pont and vice-president of

General Motors, summarized the views of the Smith group in a radio

broadcast in the Lucky Strike series in May, 1932. Paraphrasing Jefferson's

first inaugural, Raskob advocated frugality in government, states' rights,

the taking of government out of business, relief of business, relief of business

from unreasonable governmental restrictions, voluntary cooperation, elimina-

tion of governmental attempts at price fixing, presumably in agriculture--

in general a return of authority to the states. Fundamentally, the Raskob-

Smith-Shouse program, aside from its much-vaunted emphasis on prohibi-

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tion repeal, advocated a central government even more conservative in

economic philosophy and policies than that of the Hoover administration.22

One week after the Democratic convention, in a letter to Jouett Shouse,

Raskob lamented that a "crowd of radicals" -- Roosevelt, Huey Long,

Hearst, McAdoo, and Senators Wheeler and Dill -- had taken over the

party, as opposed to the fine conservative talent represented by Harry

Byrd, Smith, Carter Glass, John W. Davis, James Cox, Pierre S. Du Pont,

and Governor Ely of Massachusetts.23 It is significant to note that all of

the latter group would soon become bitter opponents of the New Deal

and some the leaders of the American Liberty League.

It is too simplistic to argue that the failure of Franklin D. Roosevelt's

diverse opposition to coalesce successfully around Baker as the nominee

was the result of a lack of interest on Baker's part or Al Smith's reluctance

to part with his delegate strength at the convention.²⁴ Negotiations between

the Smith and Baker camps had been going on for nearly a year and while

Baker was indeed hesitant, because of a heart attack suffered during the 1928

campaign, he was nevertheless willing to be drafted. Baker's reluctance,

however, was not the paramount consideration in the failure of the stop-

Roosevelt movement. Rather, the failure can be accounted for by Baker's

alleged conservatism in domestic affairs and his internationalism in foreign

affairs in contrast to the image of Roosevelt as a progressive and a nationalist.

In 1931 Alfred E. Smith and the two men he had installed at the head

of the machinery of the Democratic party, Raskob and Shouse, were in

search of a candidate who could head off Roosevelt. Smith may have had

vague hopes at times that the party would reward him with another nomina-

tion. But the record shows, contrary to his public statements, that he was

too astute a politician to believe that he could overcome in 1932 at Chicago

the opposition of the southern and western Democrats who hungered for

victory after twelve years in the wilderness. He was a Catholic, a New

Yorker, a Tammany product and a dripping wet. For many Democrats,

including a host of Smith admirers, this combination of liabilities represented

too great a gamble during a year of otherwise certain victory. Smith and

his intimates knew it.²⁵

In September 1931 Smith, Raskob, and Shouse settled upon Newton

Baker as the man to stop Roosevelt's march to the nomination. Shouse, in

fact, informed Ralph Hayes, Baker's "Louis Howe,"²⁶ that if Baker "would

consent to be supported, 'Z' [Smith] will not only eliminate himself but

will throw to you every particle of strength he can muster." Mrs. Belle

Moscowitz, Smith's most trusted adviser, told Hayes candidly that her

choice was still Smith "but that if she couldn't have her man -- and such

a choice did not appear to be in the cards -- she much preferred ours."

And Raskob, in turn, offered to free Baker of any obligation to him in the

event he was nominated and elected, going so far as to offer his resignation

as head of the Democratic National Committee.²⁷

These early September conferences between Hayes, Shouse, Raskob, and

Belle Moscowitz resulted in a meeting of Shouse and Hayes with Baker at

the Willard Hotel in Washington late that month.28 Baker convinced Shouse

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that he would not actively seek the nomination and would consent to run

only if drafted. Josephus Daniels and John Stewart Bryan, prominent

southern newspaper editors, had the same understanding.²⁹ Baker was

unwilling to become an avowed candidate and never did. But his supporters

never gave up and had no reason to. Baker, after all, submitted to a

physical examination, as did Roosevelt, was pronounced fit enough for a

limited campaign, and negotiated for months with the Smith entourage

behind the scenes.³⁰

Jouett Shouse came away from the Washington meeting with Baker

"greatly heartened" and determined to carry out a strategy conceived at

the conference that became the keystone of the "stop-Roosevelt" move-

ment; encouragement of an "open convention" -- subsequently advocated

by Baker, Shouse and others -- made up of uninstructed and native-son

delegations and bound by the two-thirds rule.³1

It would seem that Baker's January 1932 declaration on the League of

Nations, generally regarded as a retreat from his earlier position, and Al

Smith's announcement of his candidacy on February 8, 1932 were a part

of this larger "stop-Roosevelt" strategy. Belle Moscowitz had told Ralph

Hayes at a meeting at Smith's Empire State office in mid-November 1931

that Smith's feeling toward Baker "is one of complete cordiality; his only

inquiry is as to whether your militant identification with the League might

act as a popular deterrent if pressed too vigorously in the campaign."³²

Mrs. Moscowitz was informed by Roy Howard, of the Scripps-Howard

newspaper chain, of Baker's statement before it was issued to the press

and she was quite pleased with it. Thus from the time of Smith's formal an-

nouncement through the spring of 1932 there is ample evidence that every

known confidant of Smith was either an avowed Baker enthusiast, such as

Jouett Shouse, Charles Michelson, and Norman Hapgood, or was in constant

negotiation with Hayes and Baker, as were Frank Hague, Raymond Ingersol,

and Belle Moscowitz.³³ The evidence of these negotiations is so overwhelming

as to lead to the following conclusions:

1. Baker and Smith were well aware that open endorsement by Smith

of Baker would be tantamount to a kiss of death for Baker. Smith shrewdly

decided, therefore, to take as much of the delegate strength of the Northeast

for himself as he could muster in the convention in the hope of eventually

entering into an agreement with other stop-Roosevelt leaders and with

native sons on the selection of a third person.

2. That this third person would be a conservative and yet be capable

of binding up the wounds in the party.

3. That, while it is common knowledge that the Smith forces considered

James Cox, Owen Young, and others in the spring months, Baker was

finally setttled upon as the choice for nominee. (Cox flatly refused to run

and Young, as president of General Electric, stood no chance and withdrew

in May 1932.)

Walter Lippmann, who had access to Smith, came to this same conclusion

shortly after Smith's announcement of his candidacy. "It is impossible to

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BAKER ON THE FIFTH BALLOT?                                      233

 

believe," Lippmann wrote, "that Smith, who is a great realist . . . expects

to be nominated. He had no illusions about his election in 1928 and he

can hardly have any now about the party's willingness to go again through

an ordeal by fire. But that he does not wish to be ignored, that he believes

he represents a political force, that he intends to be consulted on the candi-

date and platform is now evident." It was Lippmann's conclusion that

Smith's followers could do no more than deadlock the convention and

nominate someone other than Smith and Roosevelt. That candidate, he

predicted, would be Baker.34

Lippmann's analysis of the situation seems to be borne out by the follow-

ing events. In mid-February, Mrs. Belle Moscowitz visited Baker in Cleve-

land. Though what transpired is not a matter of record, other than the

fact that Smith was highly gratified, Judge Joseph Proskauer told Jonathan

Daniels at a dinner at Poskauer's home at about the same time that either

Baker or Governor Albert C. Ritchie [Maryland] would be an excellent

nominee.³⁵

The last hurdle to a Smith-Baker coalition, it seems, was Smith's campaign

manager. Frank Hague, boss of Jersey City, and Ralph Hayes, Baker's

political manager, met at the Biltmore Hotel in New York on March 31,

1932. Hague indicated that he was unhappy with Smith's prospects, expressed

a strong dislike for Franklin Roosevelt, and asserted that only Baker could

stem the Roosevelt tide. "What is worrying him to distraction," Hayes wrote

Baker the next day, "is that he has no place to throw the strength he

can command which he regards as being of more than veto proportions.

You [Baker] are the only official who can step into the breach, as he sees it.^"36

Hague and Baker met twice later at the Willard Hotel in Washington.

"He was gracious," Baker wrote Hayes, "but wholly impersonal, as was

Governor Smith." Subsequently, when Hague met with Ralph Hayes and

Norman Hapgood (who, with Dr. Henry Moscowitz, was Smith's campaign

biographer in 1928) in New York, Hague agreed to do nothing that would

cause Baker embarrassment (presumably open endorsement). In the mean-

time, prominent New York conservatives such as Frank Polk, Nathan Straus,

Jr., and John W. Davis worked on Boss Curry of Tammany Hall (Curry

was also reluctant to commit himself); and at a luncheon with Walter Lipp-

mann, Bernard Baruch gave Baker his blessings.37

On the eve of the Democratic convention Jouett Shouse's admiration

for Baker became more open. At a mock Democratic convention at Harvard

University and at other appearances in Massachusetts late in May, Shouse

asserted that Owen Young and Baker were the two individuals best qualified

to cope with the depression, a statement picked up by Boston papers but

not reported in the New York press. It is interesting to note that Young

had just withdrawn from consideration as a nominee.38

There were some Baker supporters, however, who were wary of the

growing identification of their candidate with the Smith wing of the party.

William E. Dodd, Professor of History at the University of Chicago and

influential in Chicago Democratic circles, for instance, believed that Baker

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234                                                 OHIO HISTORY

 

was getting into "doubtful relationships." And an intimate friend of Baker

and Hayes, retired Supreme Court Justice John H. Clarke, cautioned that

the Roosevelt camp, in event of a convention stalemate, would veto any

Smith candidate.³⁹

The ultimate test of this hypothesis regarding the intimacy of the Smith-

Baker camps can be verified by Smith's behavior before and at the conven-

tion and will be discussed later. Smith's tactics at Chicago were neither as

stubborn nor as inept as has generally been contended. Nor did the con-

vention, on the fourth ballot, secure Roosevelt's nomination primarily as a

result of Farley's political tactics. Roosevelt's nomination was finally

secured by issues and by the fear that Newton D. Baker would be the

nominee if Roosevelt was not chosen. This observation calls for substantiation.

Newton D. Baker was conservative, internationalist, and bore the stamp

of Woodrow Wilson. In many respects he can be compared with another

admirer of Wilson, Herbert Hoover. Roosevelt, on the other hand, had

already taken the first steps toward his "New Deal." In the "Forgotten Man"

speech on April 17, 1932 he identified himself with the downtrodden; at

St. Paul on April 18, 1932 he clearly associated himself with those who

favored national regulation of public power; and at Oglethorpe University

on May 22, 1932 he called for planning of production and distribution. As

a consequence, Roosevelt became the spokesman of the popular issues of

the day, those issues which appealed to the lower and middle classes and

to the progressive reformers who sought fundamental changes in the relation-

ship between government and our society.

Roosevelt was suggesting, even if somewhat vaguely, alternatives to the

Hoover program; Baker was not, despite his impressive intellectual endow-

ment. In fact, there is nothing to suggest that the Ohioan was critical of

Hoover's domestic policies.40 Roosevelt was the spokesman, too, of a nation-

alistic approach to the nation's economic problems, later to be dubbed

"intranationalism" as it crystallized in the 1932 campaign. Alone of all the

presidential aspirants in 1932, he, with a small band of advisers, was

reexamining the economic, political and social fabric of the 'twenties. In the

process Roosevelt did more than preempt the Progressive heritage with its

middle-class support; he went beyond it.

Essentially it was the endorsement of the "single-issue" Progressives which

brought Roosevelt into the convention with a majority of the delegate

votes (but not the needed two-thirds). Indeed, there were also the band-

wagon types -- those who were bigoted and those who realistically feared

a debacle in the event of a second Smith nomination and those who found

"magic in the name" as their primary motive for backing the New York

governor. But an investigation of the correspondence of the powerful

senatorial Progressives, Republican as well as Democrat, reveals two facts:

their power ranged far beyond their immediate states; and most had one

favored program for the relief of the nation's ills. For Norris, it was public

power and regional development, federally managed and regulated; for Hull,

reduction of tariff barriers; for Pittman, remonetization of silver; for Wheeler,

free silver; for Walsh, the St. Lawrence Seaway as a means of reducing the

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BAKER ON THE FIFTH BALLOT?                                         235

 

cost of shipping agricultural products from the plains area. These men were

wedded to the unfulfilled dreams of the Progressive era; and while many

rationalized their ideas into depression cures, none had a sophisticated or

integrated approach to the solution of the nation's woes. Each was aware

of Roosevelt's limitations, but of the various candidates available they

regarded him as most likely to support programs they had offered up

unsuccessfully for a decade and more. It is noteworthy that the New Deal

went far beyond the schemes of the "single-issue" Progressives of the Senate.

Yet, in other respects, as the record of the Hundred Days and after shows,

Roosevelt never went far enough to satisfy most of these early supporters,

particularly when their pet projects were involved.

As for Roosevelt's strongest political contender for the nomination,

Baker's strengths in 1932 were at the same time his very weaknesses. The

principal obstacles to his nomination lay not in the realm of political tactics

but in his association with the open shop, the utility interests, and the League

of Nations. At the same time, Baker's approach to the Great Depression

was that of an internationalist, of the school of Hoover, Hull, Stimson,

Norman Davis, and Russell Leffingwell.

As I see it [Baker wrote Byron R. Newton during the 1932 campaign]

the policies of the Republican Party from 1921 until now have aimed

at political and economic isolation in a world in which such isolation is

almost impossible and full of peril where possible. It does not seem

to me that any real progress forward can be made until an entirely

different theory of our country's relations to the rest of the world is

adopted. This theory I do not believe the Republican Party can adopt.

Its commitments to the opposite philosophy are so deep that any

departure from them would be incredibly difficult. The Democratic

Party, on the other hand, has at least a tradition of another kind,

and while it is true that a good many of our so-called Democrats in

the House and Senate have not behaved with any conscious adherence

to the great tradition, many of them have.⁴¹

The internationalist point of view had as its end the achievement of an

enduring world peace and general economic resuscitation through inter-

national cooperation. Whether the stress lay in Hoover's aspirations for a

World Economic Conference, or Baker's identification with the League, or

Hull's advocacy of reciprocal tariff agreements, the end nevertheless remained

the same, namely, solution of world-wide economic questions through

international arrangements reached with United States participation.

In an attempt to mollify those elements in the Democratic party that

objected to League membership, Baker made the statement early in 1932

that has been mentioned previously which seemingly repudiated his earlier

stand on adherence to the League. In retrospect, it seems to have been a

tactical blunder for it satisfied neither those who followed his leadership,

which symbolized the Wilsonian dream of a world order under the League,

nor those who feared that Baker would do everything possible as President

to bring this nation into the world organization.⁴²

Baker made his statement on January 26, 1932, when he boarded ship

for a vacation in Mexico. When asked whether the question of League

membership would come before the Democratic convention again in 1932,

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he replied: "I am not in favor of a plank in the Democratic national platform

urging our joining the League. I think it would be a great mistake to make

a partisan issue of the matter." He did believe that entry of the United

States into this world organization would come about eventually, but only

after the bulk of the American people "have had a chance to see the League

in action, and to study its action enough to be fully satisfied as to the wisdom

of such a course."43

Reactions to Baker's comments on the League were mixed. Generally

the Wilsonians regarded them as a sad retreat from his earlier positions,⁴⁴

though Baker pointed out he had been moving away from the international

organization since the Democratic defeat in 1924. The country, he argued,

was not ready for the League in 1932, not at least until both parties relegated

the issue to the realm of non-partisanship. From a tactical view, he con-

cluded, the minority party could not afford the luxury of League endorse-

ment.⁴⁵ Newspapers, such as the New York Herald Tribune, interpreted the

statement as an avowal of candidacy.⁴⁶

Roosevelt evidently felt compelled to go beyond the Baker statement; in

a speech before the New York State Grange at Albany, on February 2, he

opposed American participation in the League. He defended his change of

heart over the course of twelve years by claiming that "the League of

Nations today is not the League conceived by Woodrow Wilson." It was

no longer a structure dedicated primarily to the maintenance of world

peace, but rather a "mere meeting place" for the discussion of strictly

European national difficulties. "In these the United States should have no

part."⁴⁷

Subsequently, Ralph Hayes urged Baker to make another public state-

ment on the League which would differentiate his position from that of

Roosevelt. Baker refused: "If there is any one thing which the course of my

life has taught me, it is that explanations simply entail more explanations."⁴⁸

On international debts, too, the two potential candidates differed sharply.

Baker believed that the entire debts and reparations system must be

scrapped or at least scaled down sharply. Roosevelt, in his Albany speech,

took a firmly nationalistic stance. "National debts," he claimed, "are 'debts

of honor'; . . . no honorable nations may break a Treaty in spirit any more

than they can break it in letter; nor, when it is a debtor, may repudiate

or cancel a national debt of honor."⁴⁹

It is difficult to determine which man suffered more from the exchange,

particularly in regard to the League statements. Whereas Baker supporters

were dismayed by his cautious retreat, Roosevelt supporters, particularly

the powerful Washington "inner circle" of old Wilsonian internationalists

who were identified in the 1920's with the Democratic National Committee,

among them, Daniel Roper, Robert Woolley and Cordell Hull, were equally

dismayed by the Albany speech which they regarded as a sell-out to

William Randolph Hearst. Louis Brownlow, an expert in municipal affairs

and Lecturer at the University of Chicago, who knew many Democrats

because of past prominence as a journalist, came away from a visit to

Washington in April with the distinct impression that the Washington

• 11
 

BAKER ON THE FIFTH BALLOT?                                      237

 

group would be pleased if the convention turned to Baker. Ralph Hayes

had reports from other sources as well that Hull favored Baker's moderate

position on the League.50 What he did not know, however, was that Hull

feared even more the possibility of continued domination of the party

machinery by the "Smith-Raskob-Du Pont crowd."

Baker's greatest handicap with Progressives was his identification with

the private utility interests. Judson King, director of the National Popular

Government League, spread the gospel concerning Baker's association with

the private power interests in the form of the New River Case. King, with

the aid of his wife Bertha, made the organization a full-time occupation in

the years between Wilson and F. D. Roosevelt, when he with other Pro-

gressives fought a bitter holding action for the preservation of natural

resources for development in the public (as opposed to private) interest.

Their chief concern was the promotion of the public power question,

specifically, government as opposed to private development of water power

resources, the bulk of which were to be found in the public domain. And

as a corollary, they constantly challenged the exorbitant rates and ques-

tionable practices of the private utilities. In their work, the Kings drew

financial and moral support from politically powerful Progressives, such

as Senator George W. Norris of Nebraska, proponent of public ownership

and operation of Muscle Shoals (later T.V.A.); Senators Smith W. Brookhart

of Iowa, Thomas J. Walsh of Montana, Edward Costigan of Colorado, and

Bronson Cutting of New Mexico; and old Bull Moosers, such as Harold

Ickes and Donald Richberg, later identified with the New Deal. Others,

too, claimed, as did King, that Baker had "changed his spots" since the

time of Tom Johnson's and his own administration of Cleveland.51

It was Judson King's contention that the attempt of the Appalachian

Power Company, a Virginia corporation, to secure a "minor part" license

for construction of a power dam on the New River in Virginia through a

suit in the federal courts, if successful, would establish a precedent leading

to nullification of the Federal Water Power Act of 1920. Appalachian

Power was a subsidiary of the Electric Bond and Share Company, a major

utility holding company built up in the form of a financial pyramid and

reported by the Federal Trade Commission to have nearly $400,000,000

in watered stock. Essentially it was contended by the Baker law firm in

the New River Case, on behalf of Appalachian Power, that the Federal

Power Commission had no jurisdiction over water power sites on navigable

streams located wholly within a state; also that federal jurisdiction did not

include that part of a stream above the point to which it was navigable.

"If the Power Trust, with Newton Baker as its legal generalissimo, wins

the case," King argued, "it means that federal jurisdiction as to the water

power over all the rivers of the United States, navigable and non-navigable,

will be swept away and control of the power sites thrown back to the states,

the most of which can easily be controlled by the Power Trust."⁵2

Franklin D. Roosevelt, on the other hand, in King's judgment, particularly

after his speech at St. Paul on April 18, 1932, was "sound" on power and

"in line with progressive principles," meaning that Roosevelt had come out

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238                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

in support of effective regulation by the federal government of the practices

and rates of the large utility companies. King was pleased also by Roosevelt's

threat of federal intervention in the power field unless corporations were

willing to accept a fair return on capital, defined by the New York governor

as a "reasonable return on the actual cash wisely and necessarily invested in

the property." This formula, known as the prudent investment theory, as

opposed to the reproduction cost formula, would eliminate profits based

on stock watering and inflation of capital. Further, King reported ominously,

"Recent information from New York and elsewhere makes it clear that

the banking and utility interests are engineering a powerful movement to

control the next Democratic Convention," presumably in behalf of Baker.53

Judson King's influence is not to be minimized. Aside from his well known

association with George Norris, his supporters in the fight against the

"Power Trust" included Josephus Daniels, Felix Frankfurter, Morris Llewel-

lyn Cooke, and Edward Keating, editor of Labor.⁵⁴ At a meeting in Cooke's

home in Germantown, Pennsylvania, Cooke, Frank Walsh (both members of

the New York State Power Commission), and King decided to publish a

brochure comparing the power records of the presidential candidates; the

intent of which was to convince the public that the Power Trust was

seeking to dominate the nominees of both parties. The pamphlet was

signed by fifteen Senators and some ninety members of the House.55

If it was Judson King's conclusion that "Baker has taken a long stray

to the right since I used to know him back in 1906 to 1910 as the right

arm of Tom Johnson in Cleveland,"⁵⁶ others, less radically progressive,

were more charitable. Thomas J. Walsh of Montana came to the conclusion

that the Baker law firm's representation of Appalachian Power "is to my

mind no legitimate basis for criticism of Baker." Yet Walsh conceded that

in a political campaign this noted lawyer would be charged "with being

attorney for the Power Trust. ... I am satisfied that Roosevelt would be

the much stronger candidate, but not because of any legitimate objection

to Baker on account of the power [case]."57

Baker was well aware of the attacks being made on him and his

vulnerability on the power issue. So as not to appear to be an avowed

candidate, he confined his political comments primarily to private correspond-

ence. In his letters he was candid in his recognition of the distinction between

his own approach to power and that of Roosevelt. For example, in a mem-

orandum to his law partner, Thomas Sidlo, he pointed out that the record

would show that he had long ago, when Secretary of War, recommended

government operation of Muscle Shoals and "was always in sympathy with

the policy of the Federal Power Act which makes possible short term leases

upon public power rights with a recapture provision. Roosevelt is more

radical on this subject than I, as he believes in public operation including

later distribution which is farther than I would go unless it proved impos-

sible to secure fair and economical distribution through private agencies."⁵⁸

As for the New River situation, Baker claimed that the Federal Power

Act was unconstitutional if an attempt were made to apply it to non-navigable

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BAKER ON THE FIFTH BALLOT?                                     239

 

streams located entirely within the limits of a single state.⁵⁹ And on the

Water Power Act itself, Baker claimed that he had helped to secure its

passage. However, on what the public power advocates considered the key

issue, distribution beyond the bus-bars, "I do not think . . .," Baker wrote

Norman Hapgood, "that it would be wise at the outset to carry Government's

operation beyond wholesale production, leaving distribution in private hands,

under government regulation. This, I think, is a less radical position than

Roosevelt has taken and doubtless is less radical than Senator Norris'

position."⁶0

Very nearly as important for his candidacy as the question of public

power was Baker's stand on the "open shop" issue. Professor Felix Frank-

furter of the Harvard Law School told Stanley King, newly elected presi-

dent of Amherst College and a Baker enthusiast, that it was not the

Clevelander's corporate relationship with the power companies and the

Van Sweringen railroad empire but rather his association with the open

shop policies of the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce which prompted him

to prefer Roosevelt to Baker. And the Roosevelt forces were determined,

if need be, to publicize the Gompers-Baker correspondence on the subject.61

Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, initiated

on August 19, 1922, what subsequently became a published correspondence.

The labor leader expressed shock and dismay that Baker in a pamphlet,

"The Human Side," as well as in an advertisement in the Cleveland news-

papers, had been converted to the open shop principle. This was not the

same Progressive, Gompers lectured, that he had known during the war.

Baker, in reply, contended that a worker should have the right to elect

not to join in a union and that the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, of

which he was then president, was not anti-union. For Gompers this rejoinder

was merely a "pious cloak" assumed by anti-union employers.62

Baker was bedeviled by other problems: rumors of poor health (the heart

attack he had suffered in 1928 was now common knowledge in political

circles); his membership on the ill-starred Wickersham Commission;63 and

rumors of Hebraic ancestry, which he deftly handled by claiming he was

not a Jew, but would be proud of his ancestry if he were one.

It is legend that the Democratic convention at Chicago was so confused

and confusing a scene that claims as to responsibility for the nomination

of Franklin D. Roosevelt are not likely to be definitively settled. Claims

are legion on behalf of Farley, Garner, Hearst, McAdoo, Mullen, Pittman,

and even Colonel House, who did not personally attend the convention. The

tendency in the past, in the process of attempting to resolve the question,

has been to miss the forest for the trees.

In the vast array of incidents, deals, and maneuvers, one development

seems to stand out as the turning point in the selection of the Democratic

nominee in 1932 -- one who favored a program such as the New Deal with

its domestic emphasis. That development was William Gibbs McAdoo's

decision on the fourth ballot, prompted by John Nance Garner and William

Randolph Hearst, to abandon the stop-Roosevelt combination and to throw

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240                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

the nomination of the governor of New York. When the chips were down,

the stop-Roosevelt combination, put together by Al Smith, Bernard Baruch,

and McAdoo with no common purpose except to block Roosevelt and then

find an alternative candidate, collapsed when it faced up to the possibility

that Newton D. Baker, the Wilsonian internationalist, might become the

party's candidate. Smith and Baruch were perfectly willing to accept

Baker's candidacy. But McAdoo and his principal backers, Garner (Speaker

of the House of Representatives) and Hearst (who headed a powerful

newspaper empire), for reasons we shall examine, found Roosevelt more

ideologically acceptable than Baker.

The strategy of Ralph Hayes and the Smith camp, presumably, had

attained its objective of preventing Roosevelt from obtaining the necessary

two-thirds majority on the first three ballots. As early as November 1931,

Hayes had written to Rabbi Stephen Wise that Baker had declined to

accept open support or activity on his behalf by "powerful elements in

the party" -- obviously the Smith forces -- and would accept the nomination

only if tendered to him. "That attitude," Hayes wisely concluded, had

"some disabilities" but also "some advantages.^"64 He felt that if the Roose-

velt opposition, native sons, and uninstructed delegations could command

the veto power of slightly more than one-third of the convention, the con-

vention would eventually turn to the Ohioan. An open candidacy by Baker,

on the other hand, could, very probably, serve only to cancel himself out

as well as Roosevelt and leave the nomination open for a third person. On

the eve of the Chicago convention the strategy worked out by Hayes,

Shouse and their reluctant candidate, Baker, seems to have worked for,

even though Smith was the avowed candidate, Baker was now willing to

accept the nomination if it befell that he should accept it as a personal duty.65

The final step in this strategy required that the Smith forces get the

native-son and uninstructed delegations to hold the line until the con-

vention reached a stalemate. No one in the party wanted a repetition of

the deadlocked 1924 Democratic National Convention; therefore, the check-

mating of Roosevelt would not require very many ballots.⁶⁶ The largest

bloc of non-Roosevelt votes, other than those controlled by Smith was

the California-Texas bloc which supported Garner and was controlled by

the Texan, Hearst, and McAdoo (of California).

Accordingly, Al Smith, Bernard Baruch, and William Gibbs McAdoo met

at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago on June 26, 1932, one day before the

convention assembled. The seeming incongruity of a Smith-McAdoo meet-

ing, in view of their bitter contest for the 1924 Democratic nomination (when

it was charged by Smith's followers that McAdoo, with Klan support,

blocked his nomination) is explained by the presence of Bernard Baruch.

Baruch was friendly with Smith and his advisers and at the same time was

on good terms with McAdoo, since both had been associated in the Wilson

administration with mobilization of the home front for the war effort.

McAdoo's presence is also explained, perhaps, by his financial indebtedness

to Baruch. Baruch, it was commonly known, regarded Roosevelt unqualified

• 15
 

for the presidency ("a boy scout," was his description) and favored the nomination of Albert Ritchie, Governor of Maryland, Smith, or Baker. What transpired at that meeting and whether promises made were broken is dependent on whose word is to be accepted. Perhaps some examination of McAdoo's motivations, also a subject open to conjecture, is germane. On many occasions in 1931 and 1932 McAdoo made it clear that he opposed Roosevelt's nomination on several grounds: he was a New Yorker; he had done nothing about the graft and corruption of Tammany Hall; and he showed no great personal force. McAdoo desired the restoration of the West and South as the power base of the party.67 Related to this was the fact that McAdoo, quite possibly, entertained his own ambitions. He was frank in writing Colonel House in January 1931 that he opposed any New Yorker, including Roosevelt, as nominee and that Baker's failure to

• 16
 

242                                                 OHIO HISTORY

 

run for the Senate and his membership on the Wickersham Commission

presented a formidable obstacle to his candidacy. Moreover, Baker had no

large popular following. On the other hand he, McAdoo, had had a strong

hold on the masses in 1924 which could be revitalized.68 Other correspond-

ence later in 1931 and early in 1932 shows the Californian to be somewhat

more discreet, nevertheless open to a draft: a draft that would have to

overcome opposing political forces, such as the wet, the machine, and the

Wall Street elements.⁶9 Aware, therefore, of the unlikelihood of his own

nomination, except possibly in a hopelessly deadlocked situation, McAdoo,

with the covert support of William Randolph Hearst, waged a bitter primary

fight in California, his adopted state, to secure its convention delegation

for House Speaker John N. Garner, who fit McAdoo's qualifications for the

presidency. He had, in fact, put his own prestige on the line by agreeing

in the spring of 1932 to head the Garner slate in that state's presidential

primary in opposition to the Smith and Roosevelt slates. And he had won

handily. Thus, McAdoo was clearly a likely prospect for membership in

the stop-Roosevelt coalition at Chicago -- but not necessarily in order to

lend support to Baker's candidacy.

According to McAdoo's recollection of the luncheon with Smith and

Baruch on the eve of the convention, Smith suggested that: (1) Roosevelt

could be stopped in a few ballots if California and Texas stayed with Garner;

and (2) that when this point had been reached, the various candidates

could get together and decide on an alternative to Roosevelt. McAdoo

claimed later that he had refused to enter such an agreement. In answer

to a query by Baruch, McAdoo had said that he would be willing to give

notice before California changed its vote to a candidate other than Garner,

only if such action proved feasible.70

There is also other evidence indicating that McAdoo had, in fact, been

responsive to overtures from the Smith camp even before he reached Chicago.

Thus Belle Moscowitz wrote an intimate friend at Berkeley in June 1932

after the election of the McAdoo delegation in California: "We have every

hope that the California situation will turn out favorable to us and [there is]

every indication that it will be so.^"71 Furthermore, subsequent to the con-

vention Mrs. Moscowitz, Jouett Shouse, Norman Hapgood, and other

Smith intimates claimed that McAdoo had broken his pledge to hold his

forces until Roosevelt was stopped. "If McAdoo had not broken the pledges

he made, Roosevelt would not have been nominated," Shouse wrote Baker

shortly after the convention. If the sizeable California delegation had not

shifted to Roosevelt on the fourth ballot, Shouse believed, there would have

been defections from the Roosevelt ranks "with the result that some other

nominee would have been certain. That nominee would have been you

[Baker] or Ritchie."72

In his private correspondence, McAdoo vehemently denied the charge

of a broken pledge, particularly after an article on the subject by Frank

Kent appeared in the Baltimore Sun. But Brice Clagett, McAdoo's son-in-law,

in a memo written during February 1933, in a sentence crossed out, clearly

• 17
 



• 18
 



• 19
 

BAKER ON THE FIFTH BALLOT?                                    245

 

concedes that his father-in-law told a Smith delegation just before the fate-

ful fourth ballot that he had decided to abandon the stop-Roosevelt com-

bination.⁷3 One can only surmise from this and other evidence that McAdoo

had indeed been a member of the coalition until some time between the

third and fourth ballots.

Between the end of the third and the beginning of the fourth ballots it

became clear to many of those at the convention that Roosevelt's chances

for the candidacy could not survive more than one or two ballots.⁷⁴ This

was not only the opinion of Jouett Shouse and Ralph Hayes, but also of

such prominent party men as Paul V. McNutt, Raymond Moley, John W.

Davis, Breckinridge Long and a host of others, including Franklin D. Roose-

velt himself. Apparently Roosevelt was not informed of the critical decision

-- who reached that decision, when and where it was made is still a matter

of conjecture -- to give the Garner vote of the Texas and California dele-

gations to the Roosevelt cause. It is a matter of record that at 5:20 P.M.,

one hour before the fateful caucus of the Texas and California delegations,

Roosevelt called Newton Baker in Cleveland. He offered his support in the

event of a deadlock. "'It now looks as though the Chicago Convention is

in a jam and that they will turn to you,'" Roosevelt told Baker. "' I will do

anything I can to bring that about if you want it.'"75

Even if one assumes that Roosevelt's call was calculated to strengthen the

immediate prospects of his own candidacy, the fact remains that he knew

enough of Baker's chances in one of the subsequent ballots to take them

seriously. If he could not be his party's presidential standardbearer, Roose-

velt evidently wished at least to be its kingmaker.

It was William Allen White's conclusion that Smith's failure to withdraw

after the third ballot led to the Roosevelt nomination. "He could have given

Richey [sic] enough votes to deadlock the Convention for a ballot or two

and then the South and West would have led the parade to Baker . . ."

Only fear of another Smith nomination, White held, kept the Roosevelt

delegations in line and made the Hearst-McAdoo-Garner combination inevi-

table. "Smith certainly displayed the talents of a provincial politician. . . . ."

There is no need here to decide whether the key figure in the move to

checkmate Baker was Hearst or Garner (who was consulting with Senators

Key Pittman and Henry B. Hawes and Representative Edgar Howard).

It is sufficient to know that Hearst, Garner, McAdoo, and a host of others

at the convention were keenly aware of a shift in sentiment to Baker that

could quite possibly culminate in Baker's nomination on the fifth or sixth

ballot. These people were especially concerned because they held differing

political-economic views from Baker. Hearst, Garner, and McAdoo were

economic nationalists, opposed membership in the League, favored payment

of the debts by the European nations, opposed United States entry into the

World Court, and had a powerful bias against "the Wall Street interests,"

who were assumed to be Baker supporters. It was on these grounds that

they decided to break the deadlock lest Baker, or even Smith, emerge

triumphant.⁷⁶

• 20
 

246                                                 OHIO HISTORY

 

During the course of the critical fourth ballot the Democratic party was

offered at the 1932 convention a choice between Newton Baker's views and

those expounded by Roosevelt. Baker's thinking, as indicated by his later

opposition to the New Deal, was more attuned to that of Herbert Hoover

than to that of Roosevelt. The Ohioan was at heart an internationalist and

also opposed to those "advanced" Progressive concepts that became the

foundation stone of the New Deal. Roosevelt, whose intellectual heritage

was similar to that of Baker -- both were originally Grover Cleveland

Democrats -- was willing to go beyond the simple reformism of the Pro-

gressive era. With a group of advisers, principally three Columbia University

professors, Raymond Moley, Rexford Tugwell and Adolf Berle, an approach

had been worked out to resolve the enormous economic dilemma represented

by the Great Depression. That approach, taken by Roosevelt, is best

described as intranationalism,77 the essence of his campaign for the presi-

dency. As has been pointed out, it placed priority on domestic recovery

and sought to prevent outside forces from affecting that recovery. The

assumption was made that international cooperation in economic matters

could only be achieved after each nation had put its own house in order.

Accordingly the first New Deal, which lasted through much of Roosevelt's

first administration, stressed domestic remedies and reforms to the exclusion

of international considerations.

Thus, it can be said that Franklin D. Roosevelt's economic nationalism

and progressivism in the end attracted more support than Baker's economic

conservatism and cosmopolitan view of the responsibility of the United States

in world affairs and so won him the Democratic nomination in 1932.

 

THE AUTHOR: Elliot A. Rosen is As-

sociate Professor of History at Rutgers,

The State University. He has collaborated

with Raymond Moley in the writing of

The First New Deal, published by Har-

court, Brace & World in December, 1966.

• 21